iShowcase

Students are exposed to a range of applicable social media theories, are introduced to contemporary notions of information behavior (i.e., seeking, using and negotiating information), consider the historical evolution of new media environments and become familiar with information and social media literatures. In focusing on how people share social and practical information online, students examine how people aim to bring about particular outcomes via social media.

A foundation for understanding how stories shape communities, identities, memories and perspectives while providing opportunities for the theoretical analysis of self-representation, composite narratives, cultural heritage and memories. Students call on their own intellectual, emotional and imaginative processes to learn tools and develop skills in digital storytelling, interviewing and oral history collection.

Students develop and refine skills and understanding of multimedia in contemporary culture based on a survey of innovative works in film and information arts, demonstrating a hands-on response to concepts covered in class using self-produced media, while also understanding how information functions in time-based forms of multimedia and video in this era of interactive information and displays.

A culminating experience for BA in Information Science and eSociety students based on preparing them for work in digital information and related fields, including internships, interviews with leaders in their area of study, professional shadowing experiences, service learning projects, or community-based event planning. Students demonstrate how they've learned about what it means to be prepared in an eSociety.

Concepts and techniques include procedural content generation, design patterns, artificial intelligence, shaders and post-processing effects, animation, custom interactions and gestures and performance optimization. Students implement these concepts on small-scaled Unity project templates using C# and also develop a larger-scaled final term project, having gained advanced game development skills that can be applied to future jobs or self-development.

Students demonstrate principles of graphic design, programming skills and statistical knowledge required to build compelling visualizations that communicate effectively to target audiences. Visualization skills include choosing appropriate colors, shapes, variable mappings and interactivity based on principles of color perception, pre-attentive processing and accessibility.

A broad technical introduction to the tools, techniques and concepts of artificial intelligence, with a focus on methods for automating decision-making under a variety of conditions, including full and partial information, and dealing with uncertainty. Students gain practical experience writing programs that use these techniques to solve a variety of problems.
 

An opportunity for MS in Information Science students to showcase what they have mastered in the program, the Capstone Project is based on a project plan that includes project goals, master's competencies addressed by the project, system design, implementation schedule, assessment plan and milestones. The project contributes to the development and enforcement of the student's knowledge and skill sets in the field of information science.

An introduction to game design that teaches students the fundamental concepts for creating games. The course surveys many different games, exploring the issues game designers face when designing games in different genres. Students participate in a series of game design challenges and are responsible for designing and prototyping simple games using a game-building tool.

Students demonstrate the fundamentals of data exploration data via visualizations, how to manipulate and reshape data to make it suitable for visualization and how to prepare everything from simple single-variable visualizations to large multi-tiered and interactive visualizations.

A theoretical and practical approach to give students the necessary knowledge that is required to design, develop and critique virtual reality games and applications. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that has recently been widely used in such areas as education, training, wellbeing and entertainment. VR offers a highly immersive experience as the head-mounted displays surround a 360-degree view of the user. It encompasses many disciplines, including computer science, human computer interaction, game design and development, information science and psychology.

An introduction to video game development, guiding students in an exploration of computer and other game design and continuing with an examination of game prototyping. Once students have a working prototype, they continue with the development of a complete 2D computer game. Students work in small teams to develop a working game as a term project.

A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies.

An opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding of the fundamentals of machine learning, including how they implement practical methods for pattern recognition, feature selection, clustering and decision-making for reward maximization, and how to develop new machine learning algorithms.